


Monday's Child (fair of face)

by i_claudia



Series: Monday's Child [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-19
Updated: 2011-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:47:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had red hair (not her natural color) and glasses she pretended she didn’t need; she smoked her cigarettes too quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monday's Child (fair of face)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/69145.html). (19 March 2011)
> 
>  
> 
> _Monday's child is fair of face_

She had red hair (not her natural color) and glasses she pretended she didn’t need; she smoked her cigarettes too quickly. She’d picked up a slow, almost drawling way of speaking from her mother and very little else except an inordinate fondness for fast automobiles, which her father had always openly despaired of and secretly encouraged. She liked gin—too much of it—but preferred tequila and red wine, though not together (this particularity resulting from an ill-advised dare and three weeks of Arthur’s concerned counseling after the fact, which was unfair considering it had been _his_ dare that started the whole thing off). Four separate countries had put her on watch lists following a splendid caper involving a corgi, a hairbrush, and the president of Turkmenistan. There was a careless air about her, a danger that flowed and lingered in her wake as her perfume lingered in a closed room long after she had left it. She proved to be irresistibly interesting or morally reprehensible to the point of shocking depending on the place she found herself in and her opinion of the company provided. When she rested, it was as a cat rests: to all appearances relaxed into boneless languor and yet in a blink she would be up again and gone, off in pursuit of some new and more exciting design.

She could shoot a squirrel at thirty yards, conquer a room with a look and a perfectly fitted evening gown, and had—if the rumors were to be believed—been the cause of the mysterious disappearance and subsequent tragic demise of her last suitor.

He had fallen in love with her instantly, absolutely. Unconditionally. That in itself was no surprise, least of all to him. The surprise was that she had loved him in return.

“You look terrible,” he says, the words surprised out of him the moment he walks in the door. 

She doesn’t really look terrible, but she’s curled up in her leather armchair wearing a ratty t-shirt and rattier sweatpants, her hair in a messy braid, and it catches him off-guard. Dom’s never been at his best when things surprise him.

She gives him a look over the thick rims of her glasses.

“Sorry,” he manages, walking forward again to perch cautiously on the footstool. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“Hmm,” she says, pursing her lips, but he can see the smile building behind the expression. “You are an awful man, saying things like that to a lady. Tell me why I shouldn’t throw you out of my house right now.”

“It’s _my_ house,” he points out, but he sighs and offers the book he’d brought her. Horace and an early edition of Cervantes; he’d found both at the tiny bookstore down the street and picked them up, claiming even to himself that he’d been meaning to read both authors for ages but unable to quash the little hope that fluttered up that maybe she’d like it, that it was the sort of thing she’d be impressed by.

She reaches out eagerly, putting the book in her hands down on the side table and grabbing for the bag he’s holding, her face open and delighted in her impatience. “Arthur said you’d been by the shop, what did you—oh,” she says, drawing the sound out with her breath. “Oh, Dom, you _didn’t_.” She’s stroking the leather cover of Don Quixote, touching the yellowed pages reverently before lifting it up to sniff, as if she thinks if she breathes deeply enough she can inhale the very words themselves.

“I did,” he says, craning his neck to get a look at the book she’d been reading. Nora Roberts. He hides the laugh bubbling in his chest, but doesn’t even try to tuck away his smile.

“I _love_ you,” she declares to the room, grabbing him by the collar and pulling him in for a kiss, the book still in her other hand, pressed uncomfortably into his shoulder. “I love you even though you went out promising bread and milk and came back with nothing but moldy books.”

It’s easy to melt into her, to brace his hands on either side of her head and lean in, pressing close to her warmth, to slide his lips along her smooth skin while she whispers _I love you, I love you_ —

“—we’re going to have to change the plan; Robinson’s switched his hotel reservation. Dom? Cobb, are you even listening?”

“Of course I am,” Dom snapped. “Where’s he going? Can we still get in there or do we have to call the job off?”

He could tell Arthur didn’t believe him, but they’ve both had enough practice to ignore the unspoken things between them. “We’ll have to push the timeline back by a day,” Arthur said, “but we should still be able to do the job; Michaels can pull strings in management without alerting anyone who shouldn’t know.”

“Fine,” Dom said. “Run me through the changes.”

Arthur’s voice helped. Arthur was methodical, even-tempered except when drinking or when stupid things made him angry, and Dom honestly liked him, trusted him. They’d met through Mal, through the web of friendships and coffee dates she accumulated and tended to; she was articulate, intelligent, given to poking around in other peoples’ lives and logic, and she gravitated toward people with similar interests. Arthur had been unbearably young when she’d found him, already jaded from what he’d seen and what he hadn’t, the ideas that had never quite turned out to be the perfection he imagined. He’d been impeccably dressed and meticulous in everything he did, careful to the point of coldness until she closeted them all up with too many bottles of red wine. They’d been delirious with power and dreams then, triumphant and secure in the cradling arms of laughter and the dry grapes of Mal’s favorite vineyard.

“I’m French,” she says, thickening her accent on purpose. “Of course I like wine.”

“Good,” says Dom. “Or I’d have to drink this all by myself, and I’m betting you don’t want to see how pathetic I become after a whole bottle.”

“That sounds like fun, actually,” Mal muses, but she takes the bottle and goes to look for a corkscrew.

She’s beautiful with a wide glass balanced delicately in her hand, holding it up and squinting at the candle through it, flame turning purple-red as the wine filters the light. Her hair is loose, soft around her shoulders, one strap of her dress slowly easing down to show the paleness of her skin. He can’t see them from where he sits but he knows there are freckles there, a faint spattering of dots running over her collarbone and around to her back, down to her breasts. Or at least, he imagines they continue on beneath her clothes; he hasn’t had the chance to inspect them yet, but he thinks...

The wine’s abandoned on the table still halfway full, the candle guttering low, their clothes are everywhere and he can say yes, God, _yes_ , Mal’s freckles run everywhere he hoped they did. He kisses down over the smooth swell of her breast, lavishes attention on the small divot in her sternum, follows the bone beneath the skin over to her ribs and further while she moves under him, over him, leaving scratches on his skin and hot whispers in his ear, pulling him deeper, further over the edge until escape is impossible, unthinkable.

She’d drawn him in, drawn them all into herself, and they emerged squinting like newborns in the sunlight after she turned them about, something subtly shifted in the world—even Eames, who shared a cordial distrust with Mal which he blamed on centuries of mutual cultural misunderstanding and she blamed on the time he’d tried to rob her father blind.

“Bollocks,” Eames says. “I did no such thing.”

Mal narrows her eyes at him. “You broke into my house and were halfway through the combination on the safe before the dogs caught you.”

“Dogs?” Arthur asks.

“Nonsense,” Eames says. “I never set foot in your house. I was merely a pawn in a tiny, _trifling_ operation—”

“ _Corporate espionage_ isn’t trifling, Eames.”

“I was still never in your house, and anyway, there was no call for your mother to shoot me. A man must eat, you know.”

“It was a figure of speech,” Mal says, too sweetly, and adds, with studied casualness, “It’s a shame she missed.”

This isn’t Mal fighting, Dom knows; she’s only playing with Eames, a verbal sparring which makes her eyes go brighter than her laughter. She’s had a hundred arguments with Dom by now: real fights with shattered crystal and both of them hoarse from screaming, both of them tired and sick to death of the ugliness between them, freezingly bitter until they can no longer bear to keep up the pretense and come crawling back to each other, wrapping themselves up in a mess of blankets and limbs and whispered confessions in the close, quiet spaces between them, their words too soft to hear. In the morning, nothing is better or right, but they can look at each other again, reach out their hands to twine their fingers together and go stumbling on together into lightness.

“Children,” Arthur breaks in, cutting off Eames mid-protest and sounding like he’s trying to hide how amused he is. “If we could get back to the job at hand, please?”

“Only if the job involves your hand,” Eames says, innocence itself, and while Arthur doesn’t quite flush—Dom has never seen Arthur truly blush—he loses himself enough to almost glare at Eames.

Dom wants to watch them, finds their sniping more fascinating than anything about the job before them. Neither of them quite fit anywhere: Eames is all fire, racing away where wind and money lead him, and Arthur is slowly adopting all the social graces of a boulder, solemn and gray, implacable. Neither of them quite works, apart or together, which is why they’re here with Dom and Mal, creating space for themselves where none exists, and Dom could watch them dance for a long time.

And they _are_ dancing, job accomplished, Eames offering a mocking hand to Arthur and hauling Arthur bodily out onto the floor when Arthur refuses; both of them dance well but they fight too much to look coordinated together, each of them struggling to lead the other. Dom closes his eyes to better feel Mal pressed up against him, her rings warm against his skin, the silky drape of her dress under his palm. He imagines he can feel a tiny bump pressing against his own stomach, the secret they’ve only just discovered and haven’t yet told to anyone but themselves in low, bewildered voices, amazed. He wants to say—he wants to dip Mal to the floor and tell her—

“That’s a reasonable price,” he said. “Why haven’t you accepted yet?”

“I thought maybe the Maxwell job would be more profitable.”

“Don’t try to bullshit me, Arthur,” Dom said. “The Maxwell job is boring as hell and worth half a million less for us.”

Arthur hesitated. “It’s in Paris.”

“How is that a problem?” Dom demanded, irritated and not bothering to hide it because he didn’t care, he _didn’t_ , whether or not Arthur was as miserable as he was.

“I thought we should—”

“It’s fine,” Dom cut in. “We can’t turn Henderson down. I’ll meet you there in a week.” He hung up before Arthur could answer; what did Arthur know? What did Arthur know about any of it? Arthur had never been—

—dazed, he’s been blindsided by perfection, and he’s not worried in the least about hiding it.

“I can’t believe you knew this place even existed,” Dom says.

Mal laughs. “There are perks to growing up in the city of food, you know.”

“I thought it was the city of love? Or of lights, maybe?” Dom says, innocently, and Mal treats him to a slow, smoldering look, a look that _promises_.

“Yes,” she says, winding their fingers together more tightly. “It can be that, too.”

They’ve been here for a week, will be here for three more, and Dom is already delirious, intoxicated with the smell of baking bread and stale cigarette smoke and the thousand brilliant things that assault him every minute in this city, its Gothic arches rising up toward the sky and everywhere— _everywhere_ —flowers. 

He cannot yet make himself believe that they possess each other now entirely, that this woman has taken him as he has promised himself to her for better or worse. The thought is overwhelming; he puts down his fork and lifts her hand to his lips, brushing her knuckles with a kiss. She looks at him, reaches out with her free hand to push his hair out of his face and strokes her thumb along his cheek.

They disappear before the main course, Dom holding the door open for her after leaving too much money on the table, letting it swing shut behind them: closing off the candlelight to give the springtime moon full possession of themselves.

When she left—Dom couldn’t think of it in any other terms but Mal walking out and shutting one terrible, final door in their faces, in _his_ face—they were cut, cast to drift and struggle on their own. Eames disappeared overnight, resurfaced months later in Munich, in Nice, in Seoul. Arthur, jaw set, had followed Dom, talked Dom down from a dozen bridges and tailed him through dreams, protecting them when Dom—

“—you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Dom says for the fifth time. “Mal, we’re fine, nothing happened.”

“Philippa? James?”

Dom glances out the broken back door to where their kids are playing in the yard, oblivious after the first terrible shock faded beneath the assurance that their parents once again had control of the universe, both of them comfortable in a way that disappears with childhood. 

“They’re fine. The locksmith is coming this afternoon to repair the door. Everything’s fine.”

He can’t hear it over the line, but he knows Mal sighs. He’s seen the gesture often enough, can picture her hunched, pressing the phone to her ear with her shoulder, one hand over her eyes and the other toying with the totem she won’t let him see. “How do we know it’s safe? What if Richards—”

“It wasn’t Richards,” Dom interrupts, surer than he feels. “It was just some stupid kids. The police have the plate number and one of them in custody already, it’s over.”

“I worry,” is all Mal says to that, and it’s all Dom can do not to echo her sigh.

“Don’t,” he says, and then: “Come home.”

“As soon as I can.” 

He puts the phone down slowly, takes a moment just to exhale, because he knows—

Dom wasn’t stupid. He knew Arthur was the only reason he found himself still alive, still breathing, and he knew _Arthur_ knew it; he knew that if it weren’t for James and Philippa even Arthur wouldn’t be able to keep Dom from quietly following Mal anyway, slipping through the same door she’d found into a further dream none of them could reach.

Arthur was an anchor in reality but Dom wasn’t sure it’s ever been the one that seems real, the one he wanted, _wants_ , to be real.

Home, he thought. All he has to do is find his way home, see his—Mal’s— _their_ —children again, and everything will be right again, as right as it is ever going to be. He just has to find home.


End file.
